Recipes for success: how to eat pancakes
It is Pancake Day today, which presents us with a problem: how to tackle a food that we hardly ever eat. But, no fear, How to eat is here, with a special Shrove Tuesday primer on all the crucial questions that a pancake can provoke. Crêpe or thick breakfast pancakes? Sweet or savoury? Jif or lemon juice? And why jam beats big old chunks of fruit, every ... single ... time
Break out the frying pan Britain and pour yourself a Gaviscon because, in this lavishly illustrated, commemorative, cut-out-and-keep special, How To Eat is tossing-up pancakes.
The pancake is a peculiar hinterland food. It is utterly familiar, yet something most of us only eat on Shrove Tuesday. Consequently, while we all think we know what fantastic pancakes are, in reality the pancake remains enigmatic. It is a peripheral culinary entity, one that lacks purpose and scrutiny. The attempt to import US pancakes as a breakfast item is ongoing, and, occasionally, chefs and food writers entreat us to explore savoury pancakes, but are either of those wise? And what is it about pancakes which nonetheless guarantees their place in our affection? As ever, no flipping-out BTL and no undue hostility to those patently talking crêpe.
The perfect pancake (realistically)
As Ken Albala, author of Pancake: A Global History, argues, you could reasonably define pancakes as any thin disc cooked from starchy batter on a flat surface. But we will have to come back to dosa, injera or those papery baobing used to wrap peking duck. In this instance, our focus is on pancakes on a spectrum from crêpes as delicate as Belgian lace to American pancakes so plump you could sleep on them.
Frankly, if you only eat them once a year, who can be doing with the faff of crêpes? Realistically, you want to be able to rustle up a pancake, quickly, from store-cupboard staples. Without the hassle and expense of buying a bottle of Cointreau or brandy, or fretting about whether you have achieved the correct gossamer lightness. Crêpes may be an art. But do you have any reason to practice it? No.
At the same time, there is something about those fat stacks of US pancakes, all pumped up on baking powder (the kitchen’s cocaine), dripping in syrup and glistening like Miami Beach sunbathers, that seems brash and ridiculous.
Yet, the best pancakes (rather than the doughy, traditional UK variety), are actually a hybrid of those two. You want a pancake that, a la crêpe, is thin and large enough so that you can roll and fold it. However, in unskilled British hands, the results are often, even if just millimetres thick, doughy, dense and bloating. The solution? Throw a little baking powder and bicarb (the kitchen’s cheap speed), into the mix. Said pancakes will be a shade thicker than usual, but they will eat a lot lighter and more enjoyably. Ideally, aim for a pancake the size of a dinner plate with, at its centre, the thickness of a Compeed bunion plaster. Like so many things in life, it is all in the wrist action.
When
Like going to the Cotswolds for the weekend or helping organise a party for your dad’s 70th, eating pancakes is a nice, wholesome thing to do. But it is something that, if you did it every week, would leave you feeling nauseous and infantilised. Unless we get into buckwheat galette territory (and, realistically, you won’t), pancakes are just too rich to be eaten with any real regularity.
Indeed, it is easy to confine pancakes to Pancake Day and be done with it. Itch scratched, until next year. In reality, they have greater utility than that, but primarily as a dessert dish, and certainly not as an imported breakfast option. Who, at 8am, wants an XXXL pile of pancakes, each as thick as a 13-tog winter duvet, topped with bacon and blueberries and drenched in butter and syrup? Not only is that cannonball of sugar, carbs and protein going to pitch you into a zombified stupor, but what is going on with that Ready Steady Cook-style list of ingredients? It is like a seven-year-old made breakfast for her parents and, somehow, America adopted it as a national dish.
True, good maple syrup can add a pleasing burned, crème caramel dimension to pancakes and if you must have fruit on there (what a “healthy” self-deception that is), blueberries are fine. But combined with the bacon, each is a fruit/meat or savoury/sweet crime as heinous as pineapple on a gammon steak, turkey with cranberry sauce or a burger between two doughnuts. I am not saying such combos never work (apricots in a lamb tagine, fruit cake and sharp, crumbly Lancashire cheese), but the successes are rare to exceptional. In principle, you should never cross the forces of sweet and savoury, nor eat your own bodyweight at breakfast. Pancakes are an evening meal, dessert or snack.
Where
Invariably, you will be eating pancakes at home on Pancake Day, and then forgetting about them. But there is a lot to be said for eating one on-the-run, hot-off-the-griddle from a crêperie stall. Note: the tendency of such outlets to shower their crêpes in icing sugar, so you end up wheezing and coughing over them like a terminally ill character in an ITV drama about a 1920s Welsh mining village, is far less pleasant. I want a sweet snack, not a respiratory condition. Thank you.
Savoury
This may shock you (after all, as Hugh FW has observed, the pancake is essentially the forefather of the Yorkshire pudding), but it is not really a savoury item. In its natural state it is rich and crisp, eggy and sweet, and, consequently, it works far better in desserts. True, you can take the pancake down an earthier, nuttier route, with buckwheat or wholemeal flour and salt, but why would you? Like pizza or burritos, there is a tendency to top or roll pancakes with anything and everything, just because you can: Cajun chicken, pulled pork, full English, asparagus and Hollandaise, curry, tuna melt, but such combinations are often highly impractical (pancakes are horrible when soggy), and they rarely improve on how said dishes are normally served. Chilli goes with rice. Not pancakes.
Similarly, while you can roll pancakes like cannelloni (and that is the correct way to serve them with a small select group of savoury fillings – to ensure some pancake in each mouthful), that does not make them a substitute for cannelloni. Pasta offers a crucial contrasting “bite” around, say, spinach and ricotta, that pancakes do not.
No, if sufficiently thin and delicate, the sweetness of a pancake is uniquely suited to a creamy seafood filling. Likewise, wrapped around a finely wrought combination of ham and cheese, it offers just enough tensile resistance to encase that delicious goo. Pancakes also work well with, for instance, highly-spiced East Asian minced pork or prawn fillings (which is why the Vietnamese already have bánh xèo), but the number of scenarios where you can positively use a Western pancake in a savoury setting is tiny.
Sweet
Now, we’re talking. Although, there are still multiple crucial errors you can make at this stage, such as:
Using Jif. It isn’t 1983. The novelty of its convenience has worn thin. Splash out, buy a lemon.
Serving large chunks of fruit in a lazily folded pancake, which means you never quite get the right ratio of fruit and pancake in the same mouthful. Served cold, incidentally, as it invariably is, the fruit will taste of nothing.
Nuts, chunks of chocolate, broken biscuits, sprinkles etc, which bring an alien crunchiness and introduce elements that melt at wildly differing speeds. All this militates against the perfect pancake, which should be a cashmere-smooth amalgamation of ingredients.
Ice-cream and whipped cream (or if you prefer its lactic twang, a very thick crème fraîche), are the correct pancake accompaniments, served on the side for you to dip into. Pouring cream, which you have to chase around the plate, may waterlog your pancake and squirty cream would be as welcome here as shaving foam – if less tasty.
Alcohol. There is a whole wing of French pancake cookery based around sticky liqueur sauces and laced creams, peaking with crêpes suzette but, certainly in the UK, most cooks cannot use alcohol as a subtle flavouring, only to administer a punch to the throat. And who wants that?
In contrast, to attain pancake perfection, you need only follow a few simple rules:
Smoothness: In order to guarantee an even distribution of ingredients, first spread your flat pancake with your filling, almost to its edges. For this, rather than fresh, hard chunk of banana or strawberry, you need jams, blitzed berry fruits or, at a push, apples and pears caramelised and softened. Any Nutella (still the definitive pancake filling) or salted caramel sauces need to be warm, almost liquid, as does the butter.
Lemon and sugar should also be added to the flat pancake, then folded. Not onto already folded quarters, or it will not penetrate the core. Regarding the sugar, the finer (caster) and darker (soft brown) the better. But, fundamentally, any sugar will do, particularly if flavoured with cinnamon.
Syrup: Should be added to taste, from the bottle or jug. You neither want your pancakes too dry or drowning and that is not a judgement you should leave to a third-party.
Folding: Once spread, the pancake should be folded into quarters. Whether you use a knife and fork or eat pizza-style with your fingers (and it is always good to get hands on), this ensures that, wherever you go in, you will get several satisfying layers of pancake/filling, in each mouthful.
Drink: Tea, coffee, dessert wine. Or, rather than haphazardly dousing your pancakes in alcohol, get the shot glasses out and blow the dust off some of the weirder spirits loitering at the back of your drinks cabinet.
Equipment: Dinner plate, knife and fork if required, plenty of kitchen roll.
So, pancakes, how do you eat yours?
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